GIFT  -OF 
MICHAEL  REE 


7/7 


SOME  NEWSPAPER  TENDENCIES 


AN    ADDRESS 


DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  EDITORIAL  ASSOCIATIONS  OF 
NEW-YORK  AND   OHIO 


BY 

WHITELAW   REID 


NEW-YORK 
HENRY    HOLT    AND    COMPANY 

1879 


NIVERSITY 


SOME  NEWSPAPER  TENDENCIES, 


AN   ADDRESS 

DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  EDITORIAL  ASSOCIATIONS 
OF  NEW-YORK  AND  OHIO. 

I  am  to  speak  to  you  of  our  common  work 
—of  its  needs,  its  tendencies,  its  possibili- 
ties. 

It  may  well  happen  thit  this  may  lead  to  a 
mention  of  some  faults  of  which  we  are  all 
guilty,  and  of  some  standards  by  which  we 
might  all  profitably  try  ourselves.  No  doubt 
it  would  be  easy  for  any  critic  that  cared,  to 
show  that  I  do  not  live  up  to  these  standards 
myself.  1  do  not  pretend  to.  No  man's  work 
is  so  good  as  his  ideal ;  must  he,  therefore, 
have  no  ideal  toward  which  to  work  "?  No 
man  can  wholly  control  his  circumstances  ; 
must  he,  therefore,  wholly  surrender  to  them? 
Growth  is  but  a  succession  of  partial  failures. 
You,  whose  purpose  is  the  highest,  you  must 
perforce  fail  the  most  conspicuously.  Yet,  all 


the  same,  your  arrow,  even  though  it  miss 
its  aim,  carries  further  if  aimed  at  the  stars. 

Every  now  and  then  some  Magnus  Apollo 
of  an  earlier  day  returns  to  our  profession. 
We  all  give  him  most  respectful  salutation; 
felicitate  ourselves  on  the  great  gain  we  shall 
have  from  his  experience,  judgment,  skill ; 
and  wait.  Eegularly,  decisively,  and  at  the 
outset,  he  fails. 

The  reason  of  this  monotonous  disappoint- 
ment has  come  to  be  recognized.  The  business 
of  making  a  newspaper  is  in  a  state  of  con- 
stant growth  and  change.  You  might  almost  say 
that  it  is  revolutionized  once  every  ten  years. 
The  veteran  returns  to  find  the  old  methods 
useless,  the  old  weapons  out  of  date,  the  old 
plans  of  action  out  of  relation  to  the  present 
arrangement  of  the  forces.  Nor  is  this  to  be 
thought  in  the  least  unnatural.  Abolish  the 
old  forms  of  procedure ;  adopt  an  entirely 
new  code,  as  our  Albary  pests  are  per- 
petually proposing ;  and  Charles  O'Conor, 
returuing  to  the  profession  of  which  he  was 
so  long  an  ornament  and  glory,  and  attempt- 


ing  his  own  office  business,  might  break  down 
in  a  police  court,  under  the  onset  of  a  Tombs 
shyster. 

No  doubt  there  is  progress  in  the  other  pro- 
fessions, too ;  at  least  we  helpless  victims  of 
the  lawyer  and  the  doctor  hope  so.  But  these 
absolute  revolutions  have,  in  this  century, 

been  the  distinctive  mark  of  our  own. 

I 
The  cylinder  press  made   one.    Before   that 

. 

the  circulation  of  a  daily  newspaper  was  im- 
peratively limited  by  the  number  of  pulls  one 
pair  of  arms  could  give  a  Washington  press 
within  the  hour  or  two  which  shut  m  the  life, 
for  publication  purposes,  of  any  day's  news. 
Four  hundred  was  large,  a  thousand  enor- 
mous, beyond  fifteen  hundred  an  impossibility. 
The  railroads  made  another  revolution. 
They  doubled,  trebled,  quadrupled  the  area  of 
circulation. 

The  fast  printing  press  made  another.  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  one  man,  still 
going  about  the  streets  of  New-York,  modest, 
genial,  busy  on  new  notions,  gave  a  new  birth 
to  the  journalism  not  merely  of  his  own  coun- 


6 

try  but  of  the  world.  When  Richard  M.  Hoe 
showed  how  types  could  be  placed  on  a  revolving 
cylinder  instead  of  a  flat  bed  he  did  as  much 
for  the  profession  that  now  rules  the  world 
as  the  inventor  of  gun-powder  did  for  the  one 
that  ruled  it  last.  From  that  moment  came 
the  possibility  of  addressing  millions,  at  the 
instant  of  their  readiest  attention,  from  a  sin- 
gle desk,  within  a  single  hour,  on  the  events 
of  the  hour. 

And  now  came  another  revolution  as  start- 
ling as  any.  The  conduct  of  newspapers 
ceased  to  be  the  work  of  journeymen  printers, 
of  propagandists,  needy  politicians,  starveling 
lawyers,  or  adventurers.  Its  new  devel- 
opments compelled  the  use  of  large  capital,  and 
thus  the  modern  metropolitan  daily  journal 
became  a  great  business  enterprise,  as  legiti- 
mate as  a  railroad  or  a  line  of  steamships, 
and  as  rigidly  demanding  the  best  business 
management. 

Thus  stimulated,  its  growth  again  outran  its 
facilities.  No  printing-press  ever  devised 
could  print  in  the  required  time  as  many 


newspapers  as  there  were  eager  buyers.  The 
discovery  of  a  way  to  stereotype  the  whole 
paper  in  half  an  hour,  and  thus  put  as  many 
pr  eses  as  you  needed  at  wcik  on  the  san  e 
paper  at  the  same  time,  solved  that  difficulty, 
and  the  business  underwent  another  change, 
amounting  to  revolution.  Then  came  the 
enormous  extension  of  telegraph  lines  and 
ocean  cables.  The  old-fashioned  letter-writer 
was  almost  abolished.  The  Washington  cor- 
respondence came  by  telegraph.  The  account 
of  a  great  battle  fought  yesterday  east  of 
Paris  was  read  in  detail  this  morning  in  New- 
York.  The  journalist,  at  one  leap,  took  the 
whole  world  for  his  province  every  morning. 

With  each  of  these  revolutions  the  sphere  of 
the  daily  newspaper  has  broadened.  It  has 
commanded  wider  and  more  varied  ability.  It 
has  been  able  to  draft  talent  from  any  quar- 
ter, to  command  the  best  business  sagacity, 
unlimited  capital,  the  widest  enterprise.  As 
the  result  of  all  this  we  see  to-day — 

Daily  papers  that  sell  you  every  morning, 
for  three  or  four  pennies,  matter  equalling  the 


8 

contents  of  a  thick  book,  often  procured  at  a 
cost  tenfold,  a  hundred-fold  what  the  book's 
contents  cost; — 

Papers  that  add  to  this  mass  of  informa- 
tion as  many,  sometimes  twice  or  three  times 
as  many,  pages  of  advertisements,  on  every 
conceivable  subject,  classified  and  indexed;— 

Papers  that  give  you  yesterday's  news,  from 
every  quarter  of  the  habitable  globe,  and  on 
every  conceivable  subject,  the  downfall  of  an 
Empire,  the  conclusions  of  a  European  con- 
ference, the  result  of  a  horse-race,  the  verdict 
of  a  Presbytery,  the  secret  proceedings  of  a 
hermetically  sealed  caucus,  the  robbing  of 
Patrick  O'Donovan's  till,  the  game  of  base- 
ball some  college  boys  have  played,  what  Edi- 
son thinks  he  is  going  to  discover,  what  the 
Leadville  enthusiasts  say  they  have  discov- 
ered, and  a  veto  message  from  the  President 
—an  infinite  variety  of  things  worthy  and 
worthless  ;— 

And,  finally,  daily  papers  that  give  you  all 
this  with  such  multiplicity  of  detail,  and 
in  such  masses  that,  unless  from  morn  till 


9 

dewy  eve   you    give   your   whole  time    to   it, 
you  carmot  read  them  through. 

To  that  complexion  have  these  successive 
and  rapid  revolutions  in  journalism  brought 
us.  What  is  to  be  the  next  great  changed 
Will  the  growth  in  the  size  of  our  papers 
continue,  so  as  to  make  room  for  increasing 
advertisements  and  yet  wider  and  fuller  news? 
Or  shall  we  presently  find  the  greatest  news- 
papers too  big  already  and  too  crowded  with 
news  to  admit  any  advertisements  at  all  ? 
Shall  we  have  cheaper  papers'?  Shall  we  in- 
crease the  quantity  or  the  variety  of  news  we 
print  in  anything  like  the  ratio  of  the  last 
decade  ? 

Certainly  there  must  be  great  changes  in 
the  matter  of  advertising.  I  doubt  if,  in 
most  cases,  the  volume  is  to  be  much  in- 
creased, and  in  some  it  is  pretty  sure  to  be 
diminished.-  The  business  of  issuing  supple- 
mental sheets  to  carry  off  the  surplus  of  ad- 
vertising, is  self-limited,  and  in  some  cases  it 
is  already  carried  on  at  a  loss.  You  issue  a 


10 

paper  of  a  certain  grade  at,  let  us  say,  4 
cents,  and  you  so  adjust  your  scale  of  expen- 
diture that  your  receipts  on  the  circulation  of 
so  many  copies  will  about  balance  it, 
leaving  the  advertisements  to  furnish 
the  profit.  But  you  fill  the  paper  with  news, 
and  crowd  these  advertisements  into  an  extra 
sheet.  Here  now  enters  another  element  in 
your  problem.  Your  advertisements  can  no 
longer  be  counted  as  profit,  because  out  of 
them  must  first  be  paid  the  cost  for  the  extra 
papor  on  which  they  are  printed.  Your  cir- 
culation is  necessarily  large,  or  you  could  not 
depend  on  it  to  pay  the  expenses  of  procur- 
ing the  news  and  making  the  paper. 
But  the  larger  it  is,  the  larger  becomes 
the  drain  for  the  extra  paper  on  which 
you  now  print  your  advertisements.  With  a 
circulation  of  50,000,  the  cost  of  this  paper 
might  be  taken  from  the  gross  receipts  for 
advertising  and  still  leave  you  a  handsome 
margin  for  profits.  Double  the  circulation, 
and  you  have  doubled  the  cost  of  your  extra 
paper  for  printing  the  same  number  of  adver- 


11 

tisements ;  yet  you  sell  the  two  sheets  at  the 
same  4  cents  for  which  you  once  sold  the 
one.  This  may  leave  the  margin  on  the 
wrong  side. 

A  few  actual  figures  may  make  it  plainer. 
You  undertake  to  furnish  an  eight-page  news- 
paper for  4  cents.  As  the  circulation  in- 
creases, and  the  business  management  learns 
to  take  advantage  of  it,  the  advertisements 
flow  in  and  crowd  out  the  news.  Your  readers 
would  resent  this,  and  your  rivals  would 
have  you  at  a  disadvantage.  Either  you 
must  raise  the  price  of  the  advertising 
so  as  to  get  the  same  revenue  from  a  smaller 
amount  of  it,  and  exclude  the  rest,  or  you 
must  carry  it  off  in  an  extra  sheet  for  which 
you  will  receive  no  extra  pay,  and  the  entire 
cost  of  which  must  be  deducted  [from  the 
profit  you  rightfully  expect  on  your  advertise- 
ments. With  the  present  system  of  fast  print- 
ing-presses, you  can  make  this  sheet  one- 
quarter,  one-half  or  the  whole  size  of  the 
regular  issue,  but  one  of  these  three  it  must 
be.  Suppose  you  content  yourself  with  a  sup- 


12 

plemeDt  one-fourth  the  size  of  the  regular 
issue..  This  gives  you  two  pages,  and, 
at  a  low  but  safe  estimate,  1,000  pay- 
ing lines  of  advertising  to  the  page. 
Now,  say  you  print  and  give  away 
with  the  regular  issue  100,000  of  this 
supplemental  sheet.  Your  white  paper  for  it 
costs  you  $250.  Your  agate  composition  for 
it  costs  you  $50  more.  You  have  made  an 
outlay  of  $300  in  order  to  print  2,000  lines 
of  advertising.  How  much  must  you  get  for 
that  advertising  to  repay  you  the  actual  out- 
lay ?  A  moment's  figuring  brings  you  the 
approximate  price  of  fifteen  cents  per 
line.  Recollect,  this  involves  no  profit. 
It  does  not  even  meet  the  expenses,  for  I 
have  counted  the  bare  cost  of  the  white  paper, 
the 'composition  and  the  proof-reading.  There 
are  a  thousand  and  one  incidentals,  the  re- 
ceiving of  the  advertisements,  the  transmis- 
sion, collections,  waste  paper,  extra  post- 
age, extra  press-work,  extra  cost  in 
mailing,  etc.,  etc.  Does  it  take  much 
study  to  show  that  these  advertisements 


13 

must  bring  a  good  price,  or  the  publication  of 
them  must  be  continued  for  purely  philan- 
thropic purposes,  and  at  a  loss  ?  Yet  there  are 
newspapers  which  print  them  for  nothing,  and 
there  are  others,  of  great  circulation,  too, 
which  print  many  of  them  at  5  cents  a  line. 
Years  ago  the  younger  Bennett  said  to  me, 
"  The  growth  of  this  advertising  troubles  me. 
Whole  columns  of  it  I  print  now  at  a  loss, 
and  I  would  gladly  throw  part  of  it  out,  if  it 
were  not  that  some  of  you  fellows  would  pick 
it  up." 

Of  course,  one  point  must  not  be  lost  sight 
of.  There  is  a  certain  element  of  news  in 
some  of  this  advertising,  and  that  newspaper 
is  more  welcome  to  some  of  its  readers  which 
has  a  moderate  amount  and  variety  of  it. 
But  one  question  must  be  settled  before 
deciding  to  publish  it  at  a  loss,  or  to 
publish  it  for  nothing.  Is  this  the  most 
interesting  news  with  which  this  space  can  be 
filled'?  Will  this  cause  more  readers  to  buy 
the  paper  than  anything  else  we  could  get  to 
put  in  its  place*? 


14 

The  upshot  of  it  all  seems  to  be  that,  in  the 
long  run,  cheap  advertising  must  seek 
cheap  mediums.  The  paper  of  the  larg- 
est circulation  cannot  afford  to  culti- 
vate it.  The  advertisers  most  likely  to 
afford  appearing  in  the  great  newspapers 
of  the  future  will  be  those  appealing  to  large 
classes,  and  able,  therefore,  to  pay  for  the 
widest  publicity.  The  chambermaid  that 
wants  a  place  at  $15  a  month  cannot  long 
afford  to  ask  100,000  readers  for  it.  She 
can  better  go  to  an  employment  agency.  The 
man  who  has  a  horse  to  sell  will  not 
talk  to  100,000  readers  about  its  points ;  he 
will  go  to  a  sales-stable.  The  man  who  wants 
a  cook  will  not  advertise  for  her  any  more 
than  he  will  for  his  Winter's  supply  of  coal. 

In  London,  there  is  a  curious  paper,  as  big 
as  The  London  Times,  devoted  solely  to 
the  publication  of  cheap  advertisements 
about  individual  wants,  matters  of  sale  or 
barter.  One  man  has  a  shot-gun  and  wants  to 
trade  it  for  Blackstone's  Commentaries.  An- 
other has  a  guitar  and  would  like  to  get  for 


15 

it  a  set  of  shirt  studs  ;  a  third  waiits  to  trade  a 
ring  for  old  clothes.  A  myriad  of  petty  things 
make  their  appearance  here  at  an  insignifi- 
cant cost,  but  the  paper  is  published 
solely  as  an  adjunct  to  a  great  sales  and  bar- 
ter bureau.  Its  circulation  is  trifling,  the 
cost  of  manufacture  little  beyond  the 
bare  cost  of  composition,  and  the  prof- 
its are  derived  from  the  commissions 
on  the  sales  and  trades  which  the  bureau  culti- 
vates. This  is  an  entirely  legitimate  busi- 
ness and  a  convenient  one;  but  it  is 
not  the  business  of  journalism.  No  great 
newspaper  could  afford  to  bother  with  it  itself ; 
far  less  could  it  afford  to  bother  its  readers 
with  it.  They  already  complain  of  being 
forced  to  grope  through  too  many  pages  to 
find  what  they  want.  The  experiment  of  giv- 
ing them  still  more  would  only  result  in  driv- 
ing them  to  the  smaller  and  handier  papers. 

If,  then,  the  greatest  newspapers  of  the 
future  will  not  be  filled  with  masses  of  small 
and  comparatively  cheap  advertising,  as  to  a 


16 

considerable  extent  they  are  now,  will  they  go 
to  the  other  extreme?  The  daring  idea  has 
sometimes  been  advanced  that  the  coming 
newspaper  would  publish  no  advertisements 
at  all.  It  is  not  impossible,  though  just  now 
quite  improbable.  The  old  theory  of  selling 
the  paper  to  the  purchaser  for  the  bare 
cost  of  the  white  sheet  on  which  it 
is  printed,  leaving  the  advertisements 
to  pay  the  expenses  of  making 
it  a  newspaper,  has  been  pretty  well  ex- 
ploded. The  colossal  expenses  of  the  modern 
daily  are  no  longer  risked  upon  an  income  so 
uncertain,  and  at  the  best  so  fluctuating.  It 
happens,  too,  by  a  curious  law  which  is  often 
found  working  in  business  affairs,  that  the 
less  you  need  advertisements  the  more  you 
are  likely  to  get  them— while  the  more  you 
depend  upon  them  as  an  absolute  necessity 
for  the  continuance  of  your  publication  the 
less  likely  they  are  to  come. 

It  seems  chimerical  to  expect  printing  paper 
to  fall  to  a  still  lower  price,  and  at  its  pres- 
ent price  and  with  their  present  circulations 


17 

none  of  the  great  newspapers  could  exclude 
advertisements.  There  is  no  sufficient  reason 
to  believe  that  the  insertion  of  attractive 
news  and  miscellany  in  the  place  the  adver- 
tisements now  occupy  would  draw  in  enough 
more  readers  to  make  the  profit  on  the  in- 
creased circulation  compensate  for  the  loss  on 
the  advertising. 

But,  preposterous  as  it  now  seems,  I  look 
for  the  day  when  printing  paper  will  sell  far 
below  its  present  price  ;  and  I  rest  this  faith 
on  the  simple  proposition  that  a  manufactured 
article,  the  process  of  manufacturing  which  is 
easy  and  comparatively  cheap,  cannot  long 
continue  to  be  sold  at  six  cents  per  pound, 
when  the  bulk  of  the  raw  material  entering 
into  it  grows  in  the  forest,  on  every  hill-side, 
and  can  be  bought  at  $2  a  cord.  The  dispro- 
portion between  the  cost  of  the  faw 
material  and  the  cost  of  the  manufactured 
article  is  too  great  to  be  permanently  main- 
tained. It  is  true  enough  that  paper-makers 
have  only  the  narrowest  margin  of  profit 
now  ;  but  better  processes  for  making  wood- 


18 

pulp  and  improved  machinery  for  converting 
it  into  paper  must  surely  come.  So  simple  a 
manufacture  will  not  continue  forever  add- 
ing a  thousand  per  cent  to  the  cost  of  the 
raw  material  it  uses.  When  the  happy  day 
of  really  cheap  paper  comes,  the  greatest 
newspapers  may  fairly  consider  the  problem  of 
excluding  everything  from  their  columns  but 
that  which  is  of  universal  rather  than  of  par- 
tially private  and  partially  public  interest. 

Are  we  likely  soon  to  have  cheaper  newspa- 
pers? You  have  all  been  confronted,  of  late 
years,  by  an  occasional  growl  like  this: 
"Everybody  has  to  take  lower  prices  nowa- 
days. Wages  are  down,  the  cost  of  living  is 
down,  everything  else  has  come  down  to 
what  it  was  before  the  war ;  why  don't  you 
put  down  the  price  of  your  paper f  But  the 
newspapers'  have  not  come  down  to  the 
prices  before  the  war,  and  I  make 
bold  to  say  that  the  sagacious  ones  will  not. 
The  Philadelphia  Ledger  before  tbe  war  was 
sold  at  one  cent.  I  venture  to  predict  that  if 


19 

it  is  ever  again  sold  at  that  price  it  will  be 
many  years  hence.  The  New- York  quarto 
dailies  used  to  be  furnished  at  two  cents. 
Who  thinks  of  seeing  papers  like  those  of 
to-day  sold  at  two  cents  again  ? 

A  short  answer  to  the  inquiring  growler 
may  be  readily  given  :  "  We  will  come  down 
to  ante- war  prices  whenever  you  are  ready  to 
accept  an  ante-war  newspaper." 

What  that  was  few  really  remember.  Look- 
ing over  the  files  of  the  journal  with  which 
I  am  most  familiar  I  have  found  that  on  the 
busiest  days,  and  under  the  crowning  excite- 
ments that  preceded  the  rebellion,  it  was  in 
the  habit  of  receiving  an  average  of  be- 
tween one  and  two  columns  of  news 
by  telegraph  from  all  quarters,  exclu- 
sive only  of  the  reports  of  Congres- 
sional proceedings.  News  from  Europe  all 
came  by  steamer.  News  from  all  the  consid- 
erable cities  of  our  own  continent  came  mainly 
by  post,  when  it  came  at  all.  Clippings  from 
the  exchanges  were  the  chief  source  of  sup- 
ply. Even  a  great  National  Nominating 


20 

Convention  called  for  only  something 
like  two  columns  of  telegraphing,  and 
this  was  so  spread  out  by  profuse  para- 
graphs and  other  cheap  typographical  tricks 
as  to  occupy  double  the  space  we  should  give 
it  now.  To-day  your  foreign  news  comes  ex- 
clusively by  the  cable ;  your  domestic  news 
too  comes  exclusively  by  telegraph.  A 
news  letter  from  Chicago  or  St.  Louis 
is  almost  unheard  of,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  the  news  has  been  told  by  tele- 
graph before  the  letter  could  start.  For  the 
two  columns  of  dispatches  from  all  quarters  in 
1859,  we  now  have  page  after  page  printed, 
and  sometimes  as  much  more  remorselessly 
thrown  into  the  waste  basket — sent  by  tele- 
graph and  paid  for,  but  not  used,  merely  be- 
cause the  columns  will  not  contain  it. 

I  have  mentioned  the  transmission  of  news 
by  telegraph  instead  of  the  mails  as  one  item 
in  the  increased  cost  of  making  the 
metropolitan  daily  newspaper  of  to-day. 
A  dozen  'more  might  be  enumerated. 
On  no  single  one  does  any  great  news- 


21 

paper  dare  to  undertake  material  re- 
trenchment. To  do  so  would  be  to  abandon 
the  field  to  its  rivals.  The  public  have  been 
educated  up  to  what  they  now  receive,  and 
would  no  more  be  put  off  with  the  newspaper 
of  1860  than  they  would  tolerate  again  the 
slow  mails,  or  the  antiquated  railroad  accom- 
modations of  3860. 

But  figures  are  after  all  more  convincing: 
than  mere  description.  I  have  selected  as  the 
year  affording  the  fairest  data  for  a  compari- 
son with  the  present  times,  the  year  before 
the  election  which  precipitated  the  Civil  War  ; 
and,  going  back  again  to  the  records  of 
the  metropolitan  newspaper  with  which  I 
am  most  familiar,  have  extracted  a  few  entries 
which  tell  the  whole  story. 

In  1859  the  total  outlay  for  news,  editing, 
type-setting,  printing  and  publishing,  includ- 
ing the  accounts  of  the  editorial  department, 
composing  room,  press  room,  publisher's  de- 
partment, correspondence  and  telegraph,  was 
$130,198.  On  the  13th  of  January,  1879, 
the  outlay  for  the  past  .Tear  in  the  same  de- 


22 

partments  was  reported  at  $377,510.  Yet 
this  is,  with  many  of  the  accounts,  sub- 
divided, so  that  a  part  of  the  outlay  is 
charged  under  other  heads ;  with  all  the  econ- 
omies of  the  period  since  the  panic,  in  full 
force ;  with  expenses  at  the  lowest  point  in 
nearly  every  department  they  have  touched 
for  several  years ;  with  the  cost  of  telegraph- 
ing from  Washington  lower  than  it  has  ever 
been  before,  and  out  of  sight  of  any  price 
any  telegraph  company  has  ever  named— a 
cost  in  fact  of  less  than  two  mills  per 
word  as  against  the  old  rate  of  from  one  and 
a  half  cents  per  word  upward  ;  with  compo- 
sition almost  one-third  lower  than  under  the 
old  spoliation  system  of  the  Printers'  Union, 
and  with  salaries  in  every  department  made 
in  some  measure  to  correspond  with  the  ten- 
dencies of  the  times. 

Let  us  take  another  year  for  a  fairer  com- 
parison. Against  the  $11,679  telegraphic  ex- 
penses of  1859  set  the  $51,728  88  in  1874; 
against  the  composing-room  bills  in  1859, 
amounting  to  $42,256,  set  those  for  1874, 


23 

amounting  to  $125,883  28.  And  finally,  con- 
trast the  total  expenses  of  the  editorial  de- 
partment, including  correspondence,  in  1859, 
$43,125,  with  the  sum  of  $188,829  45  spent 
for  the  same  accounts  in  1874. 

Trifling  as  the  expenditures  of  those  early 
days  seem  to  us,  we  come  now  and  then  upon 
signs  of  alarm  already  inspired  in  the  minds 
of  the  sagacious  metropolitan  publishers  at 
the  evident  tendency  to  make  a  better  paper 
than  the  people  paid  for,  to  give  more  every 
morning  than  the  money's  worth,  and  thus  to 
keep  steadily  approaching  the  time  when  the 
amount  spent  in  making  the  paper  would,  more 
than  overbalance  all  that  the  subscribers  and 
advertisers  were  willing  to  give  for  it.  Thus, 
in  1864  I  find  a  curious  passage  in  a  publisher's 
report,  complaining  of  the  extravagance  in 
the  outlay  for  editorial  work,  correspondence, 
composition,  special  telegraphing  and  supple- 
ments. The  feeling  would  seem  to  have  been 
general.  Afc  any  rate  there  had  been  a  com- 
parison of  figures  between  different  offices, 
and  the  prudent  publisher  of  THE  TRIBUNE 


24 

was  worried  because  in  the  five  principal 
items  of  expense  which  he  enumerated,  THE 
TRIBUNE  had  spent  in  the  previous  year  $28,- 
116  more  than  The  Times.  Here  are  the  con- 
trasted items  which  he  reported : 


Tribune. 

$49,228 
25,706 
49,547 
12.623 
9.000 

Times. 

$45,660 
14,040 
45,741 

7,817 
4,730 

Editors  and  correspondence,  not  Tvar.. 
War  correspondence.,  

Compositors  

Special  telegraphing  

Supplements,  TRIBUNE  21,  Times  Til.. 

The  expenses  we  have  been  considering 
have  been  taken  from  ordinary  years.  Let  us 
now  see  what  they  are  in  extraordinary 
times.  When  a  great  war  is  raging  in  Euro- 
pean countries  with  which  \ve  have  close  re- 
lations, through  trade,  travel  and  immigra- 
tion, the  New- York  reader  demands  as  prompt 
and  complete,  if  not  as  detailed,  news  as  does 
the  London  reader,  and  a  great  journal  can- 
not afford  to  disappoint  its  constituency  by 
failing  to  meet  this  demand.'  See  now  what 
it  costs,  remembering  that  in  1859  tele- 


25 

graphic  expenses  were  thought  enormous 
when  they  had  reached  an  annual  total  of 
$li,679.  In  the  Franco-Prussian  war,  THE 
TRIBUNE'S  telegraphic  bill,  largely  payable  in 
gold,  was  $85,303  51.  Its  additional  bill  for  cor- 
respondence, also  mostly  payable  in  gold,  was 
$43,263  46.  Other  journals  quite  possibly 
spent  more  ;  those  that  did  not  suffered  by  it. 

Now  take  another  mode  of  estimating  what 
it  costs  to  try  to  meet  the  demand  for  the 
kind  of  newspaper  to  which'  readers  have 
been  educated.  From  a  table  of  comparisons 
covering  a  series  of  years  I  select  a  few  sam- 
ple figures. 

You  have  seen  that  in  1859  the  entire  edi- 
torial expenses,  including  all  correspond- 
ence, amounted  to  $43,125.  In  1866  the 
editorial  expenses  alone  amounted  to  $81,- 
775,  and  the  correspondence  to  $49,- 
300  more.  In  1867  the  editorial  alone  had 
swollen  to  $84,778  ;  two  years  later  to  $96,- 
182;  two  years  later  to  $107,525;  two  years 
later  to  $133,854;  two  years  later  still  to 
$148,234.  Meanwhile  the  correspondence  had 


26 

run  up  in  the  same  fashion,  until  in  one  year 
it  reached  $70,038. 

Not  only  was  this  news  procured  and 
handled  in  more  costly  ways,  but  there  was  a 
vast  mass  more  of  it.  Note  how  tne  cost  of 
putting  it  in  type  ran  up.  In  1859  you  have 
seen  that  the  entire  expenses  of  the  com- 
posing-room were  $42,256.  Now  take  a 
few  later  years.  In  1866  they  amounted  to 
$86,609  ;  in  1867  to  $91,008  ;  in  1868  to 
$94,388  ;  in  1869  to  $100,769  ;  in  1870  to 
$105,492;  in  1871  to  $107,827;  in  1872  to 
$113,518.;  in  1873  to  $117,180;  in  1874  to 
$125,883  ;  and  in  1875  to  8154,788. 

Something  has  been  said  of  the  enormous 
increase  in  editorial  expenses,  but  a  few  fig- 
ures of  individual  salaries  will '  make  it 
clearer.  From  an  old  salary-book;  containing 
the  weekly  payments  from  1848  to  1859,  I 
extract  from  the  first  page  some  items  that 
have  now  a  curious  sound.  The  first  entry  is 
Mr.  Sinclair,  bookkeeper,  $15  ;  the  next  Mr. 
Strebeigh,  assistant-  bookkeeper,  $10.  Then 
follow  Mr.  Dana,  assistant  editor,  $14 ;  Mr. 


27 

Taylor,  ditto,  $12  ;  Mr.  Cleveland,  ditto,  $10  ; 
Mr.  Snow,  money  reporter,  $12 ;  Mr.  Davies, 
in  the  courts,  $4 ;  Mr.  Towndrow,  police  re- 
ports, $7 ;  Mr.  Augustus  Maverick,  proof- 
reader, $6 ;  Mr.  Gibson,  ship  news  and  im- 
portations, $14  ;  Mr.  March,  Washington  cor- 
respondent, $20  ;  Mr.  Robinson,  ditto,  $15. 
Now  skip  to  the  last  page  of  this  same 
book  containing  the  payments  for  the 
week  ending  on  the  31st  of  Decem- 
ber, 1859.  Very  largely  the  same  men 
made  the  paper.  It  had  grown,  as 
the  record  on  the  same  page  shows,  from  the 
weekly  use  of  168%  reams  for  the  daily 
to  the  use  of  494  reams.  Below  these  items 
stood  the  personal  list,  doubled  or  trebled 
in  length,  but  with  the  same  leading 
names.  Reading  down  it  now,  we  pick  out 
Mr.  Sinclair,  bookkeeper,  $48 ;  Mr.  Strebeigh, 
assistant  ditto,  $30 ;  Mr.  Dana,  assistant 
editor,  $48 ;  Mr.  Ripley,  ditto,  $25  ;  Mr.  Gay, 
ditto,  $20;  Mr.  Towndrow,  $14;  Mr. 
Snow,  money  reporter,  $30 ;  Mr.  Gibson,  ship 
news  and  importations,  $28;  the  Washington 


28 

correspondents,  $57  50;  the  Count  Gurowski, 
$20.  But  the  latter  was  not  a  weekly  pay- 
ment, and  was  unusually  high.  Many  weeks 
the  good  Count,  wbo  was  only  employed  "  by 
the  piece,"  got  nothing,  and  the  entries  oppo- 
site his  name  were  mostly  for  sums  of  $5  or 
$10.  On  the  books,  a  little  further  back, 
George  William  Curtis  figures  as  City  Editor 
at  $20  per  week,  and  Henry  J.  Raymond,  as 
second  on  the  paper,  rose  gradually  from  $8 
to  $20.  Richard  Hildreth  wrote  apparently 
"  by  the  piece,"  and  his  monthly  payments 
ranged  from  one  to  two  hundred  dollars,— 
sometimes  more.  In  1855,  William  Henry 
Fry  had  risen  to  $25  per  week ;  and  the  next 
year  James  S.  Pike  was  paid  "  for  the  whole 
Winter's  work  at  Washington,"  the 
gross  sum  of  $202  50.  Bayard  Taylor 
was  credited  $5  apiece  for  his  California 
letters,  but  on  his  return  Mr.  Greeley  moved 
and  carried  an  advance  to  $10,  on 
the  ground  that  "they  had  made  a 
hit."  Mr.  Greeley's  own  name  appears 
regularly  on  the  lists  of  those  days  at 


29 

$50  per  week.  He  afterwards  iiad  it 
cut  down  to  $40 ;  and  there  was  never  a  sub- 
sequent advance  which  he  did  not  resist. 
Once  indeed  there  is  an  entry  to  the  effect 
that  "  Mr.  Greeley  protested  at  some  length 
against  the  advance  in  his  salary,  and  gave 
formal  notice  that  he  did  not  intend  to  earn 
any  more  than  he  was  now  receiving."  For 
tea  or  a  dozen  years  past,  it  has  been  my 
duty  to  fix  the  salaries  on  this  same  book.  I 
have  found  plenty  of  gentlemen  who  might 
truthfully  enough  have  given  this  last  notice, 
but  not  another  who  made  the  preliminary 
protest ! 

Does  the  most  rigid  economist  expect  that 
the  newspapers  will  or  can  return  to  these 
"  prices  before  the  war?" 

Or  to  pass  from  the  mere  question  of  sala- 
ries, does  he  wish  the  pages  of  markets,  for- 
eign and  domestic,  to  be  sent  once  more  by 
post,  the  foreign  news  to  come  by  steamer, 
the  pages  of  telegraphic  dispatches,  special 
and  Associated  Press,  to  be  replaced  by  clip- 
pings from  the  exchanges  and  news-letters 


30 

sent  by  mail  ?  Does  lie  wish  the  actual  amount 
of  matter  given  him  each  morning  reduced 
over  one-half ;  and  does  he  wish  the  age  of 
four-fifths  of  it  increased  from  twenty-four 
hours  to  three  weeks,  before  he  is  permitted 
to  see  it? 

But,  we  may  be  told,  all  this  is  unnecessary 
and  deceptive.  Of  course  your  expenses  have 
increased,  but  so,  proportionately  have  your 
receipts.  Well,  to  that  the  balance-sheet 
affords  an  exceedingly  argumentative  answer. 
On  a  business  of  half  a  million  in  1859,  as 
a  2-cent  paper,  THE  TRIBUNE  made  a  net 
profit  of  $86,000.  At  the  beginning  of 
1879  we  found  that  on  a  business  of 
nearly  three-quarters  of  a  million  as 
a  4-cent  paper,  it  had  made  $85,588.  The 
fluctuations  in  the  interval  had  been  at  least 
sufficient  to  show  that  in  a  matter  of  such 
magnitude  it  was  not  wise  to  hunt  for  any 
more  risks  than  we  already  had.  In  times  of 
great  excitement,  Presidential  years,  and  the 
like,  the  volume  of  business  of  course  runs  up. 
I  have  myself  been  able  to  report  a  net  profit 


31 

of  $155,000  on  a  business  of  $974,000,  and 
on  the  smaller  business  of  $941,000  a  profit 
of  $171,049  ;  and  I  have  also  had  to  report, 
on  a  business  of  $925,465,  a  net  loss  of  $96,- 
690.  Or,  to  rid  the  statement  of  figures,  we 
have  made  $85,000  as  a  2-cent  paper;  have 
spent  a  half  more  and  made  only  the  same 

sum  as  a   4-cent   paper.    In  the   interval,  we  i 

• 
have  sometimes  spent  twice  as  much  to  make  i 

only  twice  as  much,  while  at  other  times,  on 
a  like  expenditure,  we  lost  as  much. 

One  item  of  increased  expense,  and  a  cruel 
one,  has  not  yet  been  noted.  We  must  now 
pay  the  postage  for  our  readers.  In  a  single 
year  this  has  amounted  to  $31,698  71,  every 
dollar  of  which  is  a  dead  loss. 

We  pay  more  for  special  work  ou  our  Weekly 
than  we  ever  did  in  the  old  times  ;  and  its 
circulation  to-day  is  larger  than  I  find  it  stated 
by  the  publisher  (and  I  never  knew  a  pub- 
lisher understate  those  things)  in  his  report  at 
the  annual  meeting  the  year  before  I  became 
connected  with  the  paper.  And  yet,  with  this 
greater  cost  and  greater  circulation,  we  real- 


32 

ize  less  than  two-thirds  the  receipts  of  those 
days  for  weekly  subscriptions,  and  have  to 
pay  the  postage  on  them  besides.  That  is  a 
sample  of  what  comes  from  putting  the  price 
down,  for  it  is  on  their  weekly  issues  alone 
that  the  New -York  journals  have  chosen  to 
reduce  their  rates  not  only  to,  but  below,  the 
prices  charged  before  the  war.  The  experi- 
ment, whether  satisfactory  or  not,  seems  suffi- 
cient. 

But  it  is  time  to  end  this  cumulative  array 
of  facts  and  figures.  I  judge  that  they  have 
left  us  all  substantially  of  one  mind.  On  the 
whole  we  are  not  likely  to  gratify  our  growler. 
We  shall  not  return  to  the  prices  before  the 
War,  because  we  dare  not  return  to  the  nar- 
row scale  of  expenditure  and  the  meagre  fare 
before  the  War,  while  to  take  the  old  price 
and  give  the  present  quality  is  merely  to 
plunge  into  bankruptcy  at  a  gallop.  The 
cheapest  thing  sold  to-day  in  America  in 
proportion  to  the  cost  of  its  manufac- 
ture is  the  daily  newspaper.  The  aver- 
age American  is  a  shrewd  buyer,  but  he 


33 

does    not    long   insist    on   buying  an   article 
for  less  than  the  cost   of   making   it,    for   he 
knows  that,  in  the   long'  run,  that  means  one 
of  two  things;— that  he  is  dealing 
a  fool  whom  he  is  ruining,  or 

who  is  cheating  him. 

v  J\ 

We  have  seen  that  the  next  great  revolu- 
tion in  journalism  is  not  likely  to  be  a  return 
to  the  cheap  prices  of  the  period  before  the 
war.  We  have  seen  that  it  is  not  likely  to  be 
in  the  direction  of  increased  supplements  for 
advertising ;  and  that  it  is  not  likely  to  be  in  the 
direction  of  rejecting  all  advertising.  What  is 
it  to  be  1  Shall  the  variety  of  news  now  fur- 
nished by  the  daily  newspapers  be  still  further 
developed,  so  that,  in  this  respect,  the  contrast 
between  the  journal  of  the  next  decade  and 
that  of  the  present  shall  be  as  great  as  be- 
tween the  journal  of  to-day  and  that  of  twenty 
years  ago  ? 

Yes  and  no.  The  variety  can  scarcely  in- 
crease because  newspapers  already  present  as 
many  different  topics  of  human  interest  as  the 


34 

average  iniud  cares  to  concern  itself  with  in 
the  day's  leisure  of  the  average  reader. 
There  can  scarcely  be  more  topies  treated. 
But  they  will,  no  doubt,  be  different 
topics.  It  is  possible  to  interest  large 
masses  of  people  in  subjects  of  more 
importance  than  many  of  those  which  now 
fill  the  closely  printed  columns  of  so  many 
pages.  The  range  can  hardly  be  much  greater, 
bat  it  may  be  higher,  and  higher  without  being 
less  interesting  or  less  vivacious. 

If  we  are  to  have  no  greater  variety,  shall 
we  not  have  greater  quantity  ?  As  growing  capi- 
tal and  ever-broadening  resources  permit,  shall 
we  not  have  every  morning  two  volumes  for 
our  four  cents  where  we  have  now  only  one  If 
where  ten  years  ago  we  had  the  half  of  one  ? 
where  twenty  years  ago  we  had  the  half  of 
that?  Shall  we  not  give  important  political 
debates  a  verbatim  report,  where  we  now 
print  only  four  or  five  columns?  Shall  we 
not  double  or  treble  the  space  to 
be  accorded  the  details  of  a  great  accident  ? 


35 

Can  a  great  public  meeting  be  permitted  to 
pass  without  a  record  of  every  syllable  ut- 
tered in  it  "?  Shall  we  not  have,  in  a  word, 
brief  summaries  of  the  news  for  those  who 
are  hurried,  supplemented  by  the  most  vo- 
luminous details  for  those  who  have  special 
interest  and  ample  leisure;  and  shall  we  not 
habitually  contemplate  the  issue  of  sixteen 
pages  to  carry  all  this  matter,  where  more 
than  eight  now  is  the  exception  rather  than 
the  rule  1 

I  know  very  well  that  it  is  in  this 
direction  the  thoughts  of  many  of  our 
wisest  and  most  progressive  journalists 
have  long  turned.  But  nothing  seems 
clearer  to  me  than  the  certainty  that  the  great 
journals  of  the  future  will  not  make  their 
chief  progress  in  this  direction.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve that  the  daily  newspaper  of  1890  will 
give  many  niore  pages  than  that  of  1880. 
Bookmaking  is  not  journalism.  Even  maga- 
zine making  is  not  journalism.  The  business 
of  a  daily  newspaper  is  to  print  the  news  of 
the  day,  in  such  compass  that  the  average 


36 

reader  may  fairly  expect  to  master  it  durin  g 
the  day,  without  interfering  with  his  regular 
business.  When  it  passes  beyond  these  limits 
it  ceases  to  be  a  newspaper,  and  it  ceases  to 
command  the  wide  support  which  is  essential 
to  its  success.  A  feeling  of  annoyance  arises 
in  the  mind  of  a  reader  who  has  put  into  his 
hands,  in  the  morning,  more  matter  than  he 
can  possibly  find  time  to  read  during  the  day. 
He  does  not  want  to  skip  any  of  it,  because 
he  feels  that  if  he  does  so  he  may  be  missing 
something  he  ought  to  get.  He  cannot  possi- 
bly read  it,  and,  at  last,  in  a  feeling  of  irri- 
tation, he  abandons  the  paper,  buys  a  smaller 
one  in  its  stead,  skims  that,  and  assumes  that 
if  it  was  properly  edited  he  has  missed  n  oth- 
ing  of  real  importance.  He  does  not  wish  great 
masses  of  undigested  news  thrust  upon  him, 
in  bulk,  that  he  may  take  out  what  he 
wants.  He  insists  that  his  editor  shall  do 
this  for  him  ;  shall  select  the  salient  points 
and  present  them  within  reasonable  compass. 
It  would  make  no  difference,  if  you  offered 
him  the  undigested  mass  at  the  same  price 


37 

with  the  compact  summary.  He  will  pay  just  as 
much  for  half  the  matter  if  put  in  manage- 
able shape.  The  great  revolution  of  the  fu- 
ture in  newspapers  is  not,  therefore,  to 
be  in  doubling  their  size,  in  doubling  the 
quantity  of  matter  they  give,  or  in  doubling 
the  multitude  of  subjects  they  already  treat. 

But,  as  we  have  seen,  the  history  of  jour- 
nalism, for  fifty  years,  has  been  a  rapid  suc- 
cession of  revolutions,  and  no  man  knows  as 
well  as  the  hard-working  editor  that  perfec- 
tion has  not  yet  been  evolved.  Other  changes, 
as  marked,  are  certainly  impending.  What 
is  the  next? 

It  was  a  pleasant  conceit  of  Henry  Watter- 
son's  that,  if  Shakespeare  were  living  now, 
he  would  be  an  editor.  The  fancy  might 
have  fallen  better  upon  a  contemporary  of 
Shakespeare's— that  greatest,  wisest,  mean- 
est of  mankind,  who  anticipated  the  mod- 
ern newspaper,  in  taking  all  knowledge 
to  be  his  province.  But  newspapers  are  many 
and  perpetual.  Shakespeares  and  Bacons  come 


38 

once  in  the  centuries.  Yet  of  this  we  may 
be  sure  :  The  field  for  advantages  through 
enterprise  in  the  mere  getting  of  news  is 
about  exhausted.  The  great  newspapers  can 
now  all  command  substantially  the  same 
facilities.  Generally  speaking,  the  news  that 
one  gets  another  can  get  if  it  wishes.  Ke- 
curring,  then,  to  Watterson's  conceit,  it  seems 
safe  to  say  that  in  the  next  great  stage  of  jour- 
nalism the  enterprise  that  now  exhausts  itself  on 
costly  cable  dispatches  will  go  to  men  who 
can  make  a  great  news  feature  valuable 
rather  from  the  story  it  tells  than  from  the 
money  spent  in  carrying  it  to  you  ;  who  will 
buy  for  you  a  costly  thing  rather  than  chal- 
lenge your  admiration  merely  for  the  money 
spent  in  the  costly  transportation  of  a  thing 
of  less  moment.  If  it  must  send  a  Stanley 
to  Africa— and  we  may  well  hope  that  feats 
so  brilliant  can  be  repeated — it  will  send  also 
a  Macaulay  to  tell  his  story  for  him. 

Why  should  the  busy  man  read  the  history 
of  yesterday  at  a  greater  disadvantage  than  the 
history  of  a  hundred  years  ago  ?  Yet  that  of 


39 

a  hundred  years  ago  lias  been  most  carefully 
collated,  sifted,  winnowed,  relieved  of  surplus- 
age, arranged  in  proper  perspective.  You  are 
not  forced  to  read  the  official  documents,  to 
burrow  among  the  dry  reports,  to  study  with 
minute  and  painstaking  care  the  disjecta  mem- 
bra. You  are  not  loaded  with  facts  that  are 
useless,  particulars  that  give  no  form  or  color 
to  the  picture.  All  this  waste  is  removed. 
Thousands  of  pages  are  searched  to  give  you 
one,  but  on  that  one  is  all  you  need  to  know. 
A  moderately  industrious  man  might  spend  his 
lifetime  reading  the  authorities  on  which  Motley 
constructed  the  History  of  the  Dutch  Republic, 
yet  who— -speaking  of  intelligent  people  in  the 
mass,  not  of  individual  investigators— who 
cares  for  the  authorities'?  Who  wants  any- 
thing but  Motley'?  The  greatest  of  recent 
narrative  successes  has  been  Green's  "  Short 
History  of  the  English  People."  Why  shall 
not  the  most  enterprising  journal  of  the  next 
decade  be  that  which  shall  still  employ  colos- 
sal capital  to  gather  all  the  news,  and  then 
crown  and  fructify  its  expenditure  by  hav- 


40 

ing  a  staff  of  Greens  and  Froudes  to  tell 
it? 

Are  a  busy  people  entitled  to  fewer  labor- 
saving  and  time-saving  appliances  about  the 
affairs  that  most  vitally  concern  them— the 
affairs  of  their  own  day  and  home— than 
about  those  of  past  centuries'?  Why  should 
not  the  impeachment  of  Andrew  Johnson,  for 
instance,  have  been  as  well  told  for  us  as  the  im- 
peachment of  Warren  Hastings  1  A  thousand 
want  to  know  the  story  of  yesterday,  where 
one  cares  for  that  of  a  hundred  years 
ago.  Shall  this  one  command  the  labor,  the 
scholarship,  the  genius  of  the  world,  while  the 
thousands  must  toil  for  themselves  among  the 
confused  heaps,  and  winnow  a  bushel  for 
every  grain  they  get  ? 

I  do  not  mean  that  the  news  of  to-day  must 
be  dwarfed  into  the  space  it  would  receive  in 
the  histories  of  a  hundred  years  hence.  It 
must,  of  course,  be  treated  with  the  fulness 
which  the  present,  or,  if  you  will,  the  fleeting 
interest  in  it  demands.  But  the  eclectic  prin- 
ciple is  precisely  the  same.  The  reader  of  to- 


41 

day  is  entitled  to  have  the  story  of  the  day 
told  for  him  as  skilfully  as  if  it  were  the  story 
of  a  hundred  years  ago ;  as  attractively,  in 
proportion  to  his  interest  in  it  as  briefly,  with 
as  little  waste  and  as  rigid  an  exclusion  of 
everything  that  does  not  add  to  the  vividness 
and  fidelity  of  the  picture. 

The  Saturday  Eeview  called  Macaulay  the 
father  of  picturesque  reporters.  It  is  in  get- 
ting such  reporters  that  the  ultimate  success 
of  the  wisest  and  most  munificent  news- 
paper enterprise  must  yet  display  itself. 
Nor  do  I  mean  that  it  is  only  reporting 
on  a  grand  scale  that  is  to  be  thus  ennobled— 
reporting  a  great  battle,  a  revolution,  a 
pageant  that  fixes  the  eye  of  the  world.  The 
genius  that  enriched  the  dramatic  story  of  the 
death  of  Charles  the  Second,  or  the  Peace  of 
Byswick,  never  showed  itself  to  greater  advan- 
tage than  in  that  famous  third  chapter,  wherein 
by  a  thousand  subtle  touches  and  the  use  of 
a  myriad  trifling  incidents,  like  those  that 
now  lie  under  every  reporter's  eye,  there  was 
reproduced  a  picture  of  a  past  age  more 


! 


42 

minute,  more  comprehensive,  more  vivid  and, 
we  may  even  say,  more  interesting,  than  any 
newspaper  has  given  us  of  our  own. 

It  will  be  the  highest  achievement  of  the 
most  enterprising  journalism  to  make,  day  by 
day,  for  the  morning  reader  such  a  picture  of 
his  own  city,  of  his  own  country— such  a  pic- 
ture for  him  of  the  world,  indeed,  of  the  day 
before. 

The  elements  of  the  picture  will  be  ar- 
ranged, too,  precisely  in  the  order  I 
have  named.  In  the  foreground  will 
be  his  own  city ;  the  middle  distance  will  be 
filled  by  his  country ;  beyond  that,  in  the 
smaller  proportion  to  which  its  relative  im- 
portance in  his  eye  and  for  his  purposes,  en- 
titles it,  will  be  the  rest  of  the  world.  But, 
if  the  foreground  is  to  be  the  city,  that  will 
require  the  greatest  care,  the  most  elaborate 
work,  and  certainly  not  the  lowest  order  of 
ability.  The  City  Department  may  then  cease 
perhaps  to  be  the  place  where  the  raw  be- 
ginners wreak  their  will,  and  become  the 
point  at  which  the  journalistic  graduates  will 


43 

be  expected  to   display  their  best  powers  and 
most  thorough  training. 

This  then  I  conceive  to  be  the  next 
great  revolution  in  journalism.  We  shall 
not  have  cheaper  newspapers.  They  are 
the  cheapest  thing  sold  now,  considering  the 
cost  of  making  them.  We  shall  not  have  con- 
tinually growing  supplement  upon  supplement 
of  advertising.  Individual  wants  will  seek 
mediums  more  suitable.  Only  general  wants 
will  need  the  wider  publicity  of  great  jour- 
nals, and  these  will  be  kept,  by  the  increas- 
ing cost,  within  manageable  compass.  We 
shall  not  have  more  news.  The  world  is  ran- 
sacked for  it  now.  Earth,  sea  and  air  carry 
it  to  us  from  every  capital,  from  every  people, 
from  every  continent  and  from  every  island. 
We  shall  not  have  bigger  newspapers ; 
they  are  bigger  now  than  a  busy 
people  can  read.  We  shall  have  better  news- 
papers ;  the  story  better  told ;  better  brains 
employed  in  the  telling  ;  brief er  papers ;  papers 
dealing  with  the  more  important  of  current 
matters  in  such  style  and  with  such  fascination 


44 

that  they  will  command  the  widest  interest. 
There  will  be  more  care  and  ability  in  selecting, 
out  of  the  myriad  of  things  you  might  tell,  the 
things  that  the  better  people  want  to  be  told, 
or  ought  to  be  told.  There  will  be  greater 
skill  in  putting  these  things  before  them  in  the 
most  convenient  and  attractive  shape.  Judg- 
ment in  selecting  the  news ;  genius  in  telling 
it — that  is  the  goal  for  the  highest  journalistic 
effort  of  the  future.  In  making  a  newspaper, 
the  heaviest  item  of  expense  used  to  be  the 
white  paper.  Now  it  is  the  news.  By  and  by, 
let  us  hope,  it  will  be  the  brains. 

What  shall  be  the  relations  of  this  new 
journal  of  the  future  toward  parties  ?  I  may 
claim  to  have  been  one  of  the  apostles  of  in- 
dependent journalism,  but  the  zeal  of  the  new 
converts  has  quite  left  me  among  the  old 
fogies.  It  never  occurred  to  me  that  in  re- 
fusing to  obey  blindly  every  behest  of  a  party 
it  was  necessary  to  keep  entirely  aloof  frcm 
party— to  shut  off  one's  self  from  the  sole 
agency  through  which,  among  a  free  people, 


45 

lasting  political  results  can  be  attained.  A  Gov- 
ernment like  ours  without  parties  is  impossible. 
Substantial    reforms    can    only     be     reached 
through  the  action  of  parties.    The  true  states- 
man   and    the     really   influential   editor   are 
those  who  are  able  to  control  and  guide  parties, 
not     those     who     waste     their    strength    in 
merely    thrusting     aside     and    breaking    up 
the  only  tools  with  which  their  work  can  be 
done.    There  is  an  old  question  as  to  whether 
a  newspaper  controls  public  opinion  or  public 
opinion  controls  the  newspaper.    This  at  least 
is     true :     that     editor     best    succeeds    who 
best  interprets  the  prevailing    and   the  better 
tendencies  of  public  opinion,  and   who,  what- 
ever  his   personal   views    concerning  it,  does 
not  getliimself  too  far  out  of  relations  to  it.  He 
will  understand  that  a  party  is  not  an  end,  but 
a  means  ;  will  use   it,  if   it  lead  to  his  end, — 
will  use  some  other  if   that  serve  better,  but 
will  never  commit  the  folly  of   attempting  to 
reach  the   end  without   the   means.    He  may 
not  blindly  follow  a  party ;  in  undertaking  to 
lead  it  he  may  get  ahead  of  it,  or  even  against 


46 

it;  but  he  will  never  make  the  mistake  of 
undervaluing  a  party,  or  attempting  to  get  on 
permanently  and  produce  lasting  results  with- 
out one.  Far  less  will  he  conceive  that  his 
journalistic  integrity  can  only  be  maintained 
by  refusing  to  believe  good  of  his  own  party 
save  upon  demonstrative  evidence  ;  while  for 
the  sake  of  "fairness,''  he  refuses  to  believe 
evil  of  his  opponents,  save  on  evidence  of  the 
same  sort.  What  his  precise  relation  to  a 
party  is  to  be,  must  be  determined  by  his  own 
character,  the  character  of  the  party,  and  the 
circumstances  affecting  both;  but  some  rela- 
tion is  inevitable,  unless  he  would  be  impo- 
tent. Of  all  the  puerile  follies  that  have  mas- 
queraded before  High  Heaven  in  the  guise  of 
Reform,  the  most  childish  has  been  the  idea 
that  the  editor  could  vindicate  his  independ- 
ence only  by  sitting  on  the  fence  and  throw- 
ing stones  with  impartial  vigor  alike  at  friend 
and  foe. 

Granting,    then,   that   all  great   newspapers 
which  aim  to  accomplish  any   considerable  re- 


47 

suits,  or  exert  any  considerable  influence 
upon  the  organized  public  opinion  of  their 
time,  will  come  to  be  classed  as  generally 
acting  with  or  in  advance  of  one  or  another 
/great  party,  is  there  not  still  a  wide  field  upon 
which  the  whole  press,  irrespective  of  party 
affiliations  or  tendencies,  should  unite?  With 
some  minor  disagreements  as  to  methods,  may 
we  not  substantially  work  all  together,  on  at 
least  these  three  pressing  necessities  of  the 
time"  :— 

1.  A  constant,  systematic  supervision  of  local 
government,  in  all  things  affecting  taxes, 
and  the  increase  of  local  debt.  There  is  no 
need,  before  this  audience  or  any  intelligent 
audience,  to  enlarge  upon  the  crushing  evils 
of  the  municipal  extravagance  which  for 
the  last  fifteen  years  has  run  riot 
over  the  whole  continent.  We  have  been  ac- 
customed to  talk  with  bated  breath  of  the 
enormous  size  and  stifling  weight  of  our  Na- 
tional debt.  Yet  to  manage  the  National  debt 
is  child's  play  compared  with  the  task  of  plac- 
ing on  any  solvent  basis,  and  within  manage- 


48 

able  compass,  the  municipal  obligations  of  the 
country.  Said  one  of  the  wisest  financiers  of 
the  West,  "  If  I  lived  in  New-York  I  should 
feel  bound  to  devote  a  considerable  part  of 
every  day  in  my  own  self-defence,  in  co- 
operation with  other  capitalists,  in  an  attempt 
to  keep  the  city  government  within  bounds, 
and  to  keep  down  taxes."  He  has  since  learned 
that  he  might,  to  advantage,  have  been  at 
work  for  years  at  the  same  task  in 
his  own  city.  It  is  a  policy  on  which  all 
newspapers  might  fairly  unite.  It  is  at  least 
one  to  which  the  best  efforts  of  every  editor 
who  wishes  well  to  the  city  which  sustains 
him  should,  without  cant,  honestly  and  clear- 
sightedly, be  directed. 

2.  Equally   hearty  should   be   the  union  of 
effort  toward  an  examination  of   all  charities. 
The  growth  of  this  interest  is  something  enor- 
mous.    The   abuses    connected    with    it    are 
equally  startling,  and   the  mischievous  effects 
are  only  second  to  the  evils  wrought  upon  the 
whole  community  by  municipal   extravagance. 

3.  It  does   not   seem   to  me  quite  a  truism, 


49 

as  some  may  regard  it,  nor  yet  quite  Utopian, 
as  others  surely  will,  to  declare  that  the  press 
ought  to  join  heartily,  in  right  brotherly  accord, 
no  matter  what  the  party  differences,  in  wag- 
ing war  on  abuses  affecting  the  public  morals. 
Does  anybody  suppose  that,  if  we  did,  we 
should  see  on  our  statute  books  laws  against 
vice  which  nobody  enforces  and  nobody  ex- 
pects to  see  enforced  ?  How  long  would 
policy  shops  thrive  against  such  a  union "? 
How  long  would  Excise  Commissioners  defy 
the  decency  of  the  community  by  licens- 
ing peanut  stands  as  "hotels,"  in  order 
that  they  might  sell  liquor  in  defiance  of 
law1? 

We  might  well  wish,  but  with  less  hope, 
for  a  similar  agreement  upon  the  great  prob- 
lem of  the  treatment  of  criminal  news.  None 
of  us  have  to  deal  with  a  more  perplexing 
question,  and  as  yet  the  men  of  good- will  in 
the  profession  have  reached  no  common 
ground  about  it.  Meantime,  those  who  value 
immediate  pecuniary  success  above  any  other 
consideration,  have  found  the  criminal  news 


50 

a  real  gold  mine,  and   explore   and   exploit  it 
accordingly. 

A  great  newspaper  must  make  money. 
Money-making  indeed  may  not  be  the  sole  ob- 
ject ;  may,  perhaps,  not  be  the  chief  object, 
since  it  is  a  profession,  and  not  a  mere  trade, 
which  editors  conduct.  But  whether  for  in- 
fluence or  durable  success,  a  sound  commer- 
cial basis  is  indispensable  to  a  great  daily 
newspaper.  Prosperity  carries  weight ;  sol- 
vency gives  a  sense  of  security.  The  paper 
which  supports  itself  respectably  can  better 
expect  to  have  its  opinions  regarded  by  oth- 
ers. It  must,  therefore,  rest  for  its  chief  sup- 
port upon  the  honest  sale  of  wares  the  public 
want.  Whenever  it  does  not,  it  becomes  a 
mere  journal  of  propagandism,  and  it  lacks  in- 
fluence precisely  in  proportion  as  it  lives  by 
passing  the  hat. 

Young  editors  are  likely  to  grow  up  in  an 
atmosphere  of  opposition  to  the  counting- 
room.  As  they  become  older  they  cease  to 
despise  the  base  of  their  supplies,  and  will  be 


51 

ready  to   give   some   careful   consideration  to 
certain  counting-room  points  :— 

1.  There  can  be  but  one  head  to  a  newspa- 
per, and  that  head,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
must  be  its  Editor.  The  control  cannot  with 
safety  reside  in  the  counting-room.  In 
younger  days  I  was  disposed  to  depre- 
ciate the  publisher.  Long  since  I  learned 
the  folly  of  that,  but  I  insist,  as 
strongly  now  as  ever,  that  the  place  for 
final  decision  must  be  the  Editor's  chair.  No 
newspaper  can  have  the  highest  respect  whose 
Editor  does  not  peremptorily  say  when  oc- 
casion requires,  "  I  will  not  insert  that  adver- 
tisement at  any  cost.  I  am  not  willing  to  lay 
it  before  my  readers."  "  I  will  criticise  that 
abuse,  no  matter  what  advertisements  it 
may  drive  away  from  us."  And  again, 
"  I  will  not  put  that  advertisement  in 
that  place  or  in  that  type  no  matter 
wfrat  they  are  willing  to  pay  for  it." 
Wherever  there  is  a  conflict  between  the 
counting-room  and  the  editorial-room  on 
these  or  a  hundred  similar  and  larger  points, 


52 

there  is  always  weakness  and  loss  of  public 
respect,  no  matter  which  side  prevails.  All 
successful  newspaper  conduct  points  to  the 
necessity  of  an  absolute  autocracy,  with  the 
autocrat  in  the  Editor's  chair. 

2.  One  golden  rule  should  be  kept  before 
every  occupant  of  the  counting-room,  "  This  is 
a  one-price  establishment."  There  is  no  other 
fair  way  for  advertisers;  there  is  no  other 
self-respecting  way  for  a  newspaper.  If  you 
sell  a  certain  part  of  your  space  at  all,  sell  it 
under  the  same  conditions  to  all  alike.  There 
is  no  special  dispensation  for  newspapers 
which  permits  them  to  commit  commercial 
sins  and  escape  the  commercial  penalty.  If 
you  do  a  "  Cheap  John"  business,  you  must 
take  a  "  Cheap  John  "  standing.  If  you  want 
a  business  as  solid  as  that  of  A. 
T.  Stewart,  you  must  abide  by  the  com- 
mercial maxims  that  made  his  success. 
The  moment  one  advertising  agent  is  able  to 
get  a  ten-line  advertisement  into  your 
columns  under  any  particular  classification 
cheaper  than  another  one  can,  or  cheaper  than 


53 

any  individual  customer  can  (the  recognized 
commission  excepted),  that  moment  your  busi- 
ness has  ceased  to  be  an  honest  commercial 
business,  and  degenerated  into  dicker.  There 
can  be  no  safer  rule  for  a  publisher  than  to 
dismiss  any  employe  who,  for  any  considera- 
tion, takes  an  advertisement  from  any 
quarter  for  less  than  the  honest  rate  the 
paper  professes  to  charge  for  it,  or  who 
charges  anybody  else  a  penny  more 
than  that  rate.  All  this  sounds  like  a  truism, 
and  yet  we  shall  be  nearer  the  golden  age 
when  more  newspapers  adopt  a  policy  at  once 
so  simple,  so  straightforward  and  so  re- 
munerative. 

3.  Sell  your  wares  for  what  they  are. 
Don't  surrender  to  the  vulgar  folly  that  you 
must  make  advertisers  believe  that  you  have 
an  incredible  circulation,  or  even  that  you 
have  the  largest  circulation.  The  value  of 
a  circulation  is  often  comparative,  anyway  ; 
one  paper  with  a  list  of  but  10,000 
may  be  worth  as  much  as  another  which 
prints  100,000.  The  public  is  finding  out  the 


54 

humbug  about  big  circulations,  and  sooner  or 
later  it  goes  where  it  gets  its  money's  worth. 
The  Nation  announces  that  it  prints  only  7,500 
copies,  all  told,  yet  it  gets  15  cents  a  line 
for  its  advertising,  has  plenty  of  it,  and 
gives  the  money's  worth  every  time. 
There  is  but  one  reason  of  the  least  weight 
against  publishing  a  daily  statement  of  circu- 
lation. The  public  have  been  so  demoralized 
by  the  grotesque  ideas  of  numbers,  not  merely 
as  to  newspapers  but  in  a  hundred  other  mat- 
ters, with  which  every  editor  is  familiar, 
that  ordinary  figures  have  largely  lost 
their  significance.  You  all  know  how 
a  meeting  which  completely  packs  a  hall 
with  seats  for  500  is  always  spoken  of  as  a 
gathering  of  thousands ;  how  a  man  who  is 
known  to  have  a  few  thousand  dollars  in 
each  of  two  or  three  ventures  pres- 
ently becomes,  in'  the  current  talk,  worth 
a  hundred  thousand,  while  from  that  to  being 
a  millionaire  who  swindles  the  tax  collector 
in  his  returns  is  the  shortest  sort  of  a  steiV. 
Not  until  the  administrator  comes  to  look  up 


55 

the  assets  is  the  delusion  discovered,  and 
then  the  dear  public  goes  through  the  same 
old  amazement  over  and  over  again.  Just 
such  mistakes  exist  perpetually  in  the  popular 
fancy  in  regard  to  the  circulations  of  favorite 
newspapers,  until  there  is  scarcely  one  in  the 
country  which  can  frankly  state  exactly  what 
it  prints,  handsome  as  the  showing  might 
be,  without  disappointing  some  of  its  cham- 
pions, who,  having  lost  the  meaning  of  fig- 
ures, would  think  it  certainly  entitled  to 
double  as  much.  But  the  policy  of  prepos- 
terous brag  on  circulation  has  ceased  to  pay. 
The  other  members  of  the  profession 
know,  and  the  public  will  learn,  that 
there  is  some  sort  of  proportion  between 
means  and  ends,  that  the  range  of  circulation 
and  the  mechanical  facilities  for  producing  it 
bear  some  relation  to  the  real  figures,  and 
should  to  the  figures  given.  In  my  cotton - 
planting  days  a  genial,  hearty  rebel  neighbor, 
General  Yorke,  undertook  to  take  the  conceit 
crit  of  his  Yankee  friend.  "How  are  you 
getting  along  cotton-picking'?"  said  he.  "0, 


56 

fairly  well.7'  "How  much  are  you  getting 
out?"  "About  a  bale  a  day,"  was  the  practi- 
cal and  unsophisticated  answer,  "  0, 
indeed,"  said  the  General,  "  that  is  doing 
very  well  for  a  Yankee;  very  well." 
"And  how  are  you  getting  on?"  re- 
turned the  Northerner.  "0,  I  am  picking 
pretty  lively  now ;  I  am  getting  out  about 
eight  bales  a  day."  Eushing  home  in  hot 
haste,  I  called  up  the  "  driver  "  of  the  pick- 
ing-gang, and  exclaimed,  "  Jasper,  General 
Yorke  says  he  is  getting  out  eight  bales  a  day. 
Now  we  are  getting  out  only  one,  though  we 
have  more  cotton  here  than  he  has.  You  must 
bring  your  people  down  to  their  work,  and 
not  let  the  cotton  go  to  waste."  Jasper 
scratched  his  head  awhile,  and  said,  "  Did 
you  say  Massa  Yorke  say  he  gittin'  out 
eight  bales  a  day?"  "Yes."  "Well, 
Massa  Yorke  a  mighty  good  man. 
But  did  he  say  he  gittin'  out  eight  bales  a 
day?"  "Yes,  I  tell  you,  that's  just  what  he 
said."  "Well,"  continued  the  puzzled  negro 
scratching  his  head  more  vigorously,  "  Masaa 


57 

Yorke's  a  berry  good  man.  If  he  say  lie  git 
eight  bales  a  day,  he  git  'em;  but  dis  I  knowfo' 
sho':  he  haul  'em  all  in  at  one  load,  on  one  fo'- 
mule  wagon."  The  case  was  disposed  of  ;  and 
the  similar  brag  of  the  newspaper  publisher 
who  issues  50,000  copies  a  day  and  prints 
them  on  one  four-cylinder  press  between 
half -past  4  and  6  in  the  morning,  admits  of 
as  ready  and  complete  elucidation. 

4.  Sell  your  own  wares ;  don't  fool  away 
time  trying  to  run  down  your  neighbor's. 
What  difference  does  it  make  what  his  circu- 
lation is?  Probably  you  don't  know  much 
about  it  anyway  ;  but  you  do  know  about 
your  own.  Put  a  fair  price  on  space  in  that, 
and  give  your  whole  mind  to  selling  it.  If 
your  space  is  worth  the  price  you  ask,  you 
can  get  all  the  advertising  you  want,  when- 
ever business  is  prosperous  enough  to  war- 
rant it,  or  advertisers  are  wise  enough  to  know 
how  to  make  business.  Arnold  &  Constable 
sell  their  goods  by  offering  at  a  fair  price 
what  the  public  want,  and  forcing  the  public 
to  know  it ; — not  by  standing  around  criticis- 


58 

ing  the  offers  of  A.  T.  Stewart  &  Co.  and 
Lord  &  Taylor.  An  old  rule  (French,  I 
think,  in  its  origin,)  used  to  fix  the  value  of 
the  ordinary  advertising  in  a  daily  newspa- 
per going  among  the  better  classes,—  the 
classes  likely  to  buy  and  with  taste  enough 
to  want  good  things— at  1  cent  per  line  per 
thousand  copies  of  actual  circulation.  It  was 
a  fair  rule.  There  are  plenty  of  papers  that 
charge  more  and  earn  it.  But  on  the  whole 
it  will  be  a  good  thing  for  the  daily  papers 
having  their  largest  circulation  among  the  best 
people  when  they  are  able  to  enforce  that 
rate.  The  essential  thing  is  to  have  some  rate, 
fixed  with  reference  to  the  actual  value  of 
the  circulation,  and  to  adhere  honestly  to  it 
with  all  alike. 

5.  Keep  the  advertising  in  the  advertising 
columns.  I  realize  that  this  is  not  the  golden 
age,  and  that  we  cannot  expect  impossi- 
bilities. I  do  not  know  of  five  considera- 
ble newspapers  in  the  United  States  rigidly 
adhering  to-day  to  this  rule  ;  I  doubt  if  there 
is  one  that  has  never,  under  any  temptation, 


59 

departed  from  it.  But  we  can  all  see 
that  honest  dealing  with  our  readers, 
and  honest  dealing  with  our  advertisers 
alike  tend  in  this  direction.  It  may  be  said, 
plausibly  enough,  that  there  is  a  wide  class 
of  subjects  in  which  the  public  has  a  certain 
interest,  while  private  parties  have  a  greater 
interest ;— that  there  is,  therefore,  a  certain 
legitimate  excuse  for  publishing  matter  about 
them  as  news,  and  also  a  certain  legitimate 
excuse  for  taking  pay  for  it  as  advertising. 
But  this  opens  too  many  doubtful  questions, 
and  gives  the  cash-drawer  too  great  a  lever- 
a  ge  on  the  editor's  judgment,  as,,  to  the  real 
degree  of  public  interest  in  the  news.  The  safe 
way,  the  true  way,  the  way  to  which  we  are 
ultimately  coming,  not  soon,  perhaps,  but 
surely,  is  to  put  whatever  is  to  be  paid  for 
squarely  and  honestly  into  columns  that  are 
recognized  as  paid  for ;  to  select  what  is  to  be 
printed  as  news  solely  with  reference  to  the 
largest  interest  of  the  widest  number ;  and 
then,  if  such  selection  happens  to  further  pri- 
vate interest  as  well,  to  take  the  pay  for  that 


60 

in  the  high  esteem  with  which  those  inter- 
ested will  come  to  regard  a  newspaper  so  ju- 
dicious in  its  selections. 

6.  Have  we  not  nearly  reached  the  limit    of 
public  patience  in  the    matter   of  type  ?    May 
we  not  fairly  insist  soon  on    a   reform    which 
shall  make  all  type  readable,    none    of    it    so 
small  as  to  be  trying  to  ordinary  eyes;   and 
none    of    it   so  large   and  grotesque  as  to  be 
offensive  to  ordinary  taste  9 

7.  Shall  we  not  soon  recognize  the  fact  that 
the  fast  printing-presses, demanded  by  the  needs 
of  the  great  newspapers,  are  not  adapted  to  the 
printing  engravings  ?    Can  we  not  persuade  ad- 
vertisers to  abandon   tbe  effort  to  make  these 
presses  do  what   they  were  never  intended  to 
do?    If  double  prices   for  cuts  will   not   per- 
suade them  out  of  it,  if  blotches  where  they 
look   for   pictures   will   not,   then   will  it  not 
soon  be  time  to   try   stones   instead  of   grass, 
and  to   drive  the  cuts   out  of   your  advertis- 
ing  orchards   at  any  cost  ? 

But  these  are  mere  business  reforms.    There 


61 

are  those  who  insist  that  the  thing  reaE 
needed  is  what  the  old  Scotch  divines  used 
to  call  "root  and  branch  work"— that  the 
whole  man  is  sick,  the  whole  heart  faint. 
The  elder  times,  they  say,  were  better  than 
these;  the  whole  character  of  the  Press  is 
steadily  deteriorating. 

Well,  we  have  faults  enough.  And  yet  the 
elder  times  were  not  better  than  these. 
There  was  never  a  time  when  the  Press  re- 
sisted greater  temptations,  or  more  resolutely 
maintained  a  level  above  its  surroundings. 
The  thing  always  forgotten  by  the  closet 
critic  of  the  newspapers  is  that  they  must  be 
measurably  what  their  audiences  make 
them— what  their  constituencies  call  for 
and  sustain.  The  newspaper  cannot  uniformly 
resist  the  popular  sentiment  any  more  than 
the  stream  can  flow  above  its  fountain.  To 
say  that  the  newspapers  are  getting  worse  is 
to  say  that  the  jpeople  are  getting  worse.  That 
doctrine  our  superfine  moralists  have  croaked 
ever  since  we  had  an  existence  as 
a  people;  but  whenever  the  crisis  came 


62 

we  have  always  found  that,  beneath  the  sur- 
face froth,  the  currents  of  National  life 
flowed  pure  and  strong:  as  ever.  The  evil 
tendencies  of  the  Press  in  our  day  are  to  be 
seen  plainly  enough ;  they  have  been  seen  in 
all  days,  since  the  first  newspaper  was  made. 
It  even  works  more  evil  now  than  it  ever 
wrought  before,  because  its  influence  is 
more  widespread ;  but  it  also  works  more 
good,  and  its  habitual  attitude  is  one  of 
effort  toward  the  best  its  audience  will  tol- 
erate. There  is  not  a  newspaper  to-day  in 
New- York,  faulty  as  they  all  are,  that  is  not 
better  than  its  audience.  There  is  not 
an  Editor  in  New- York  who  does  not 
know  the  fortune  that  awaits  the  man  there 
who  is  willing  to  make  a  daily  paper  as  dis- 
reputable and  vile  as  a  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  readers  would  be  willing  to  buy.  It 
is  the  newspaper  opportunity  of  the  time ; 
— the  only  great  opportunity  that  has 
come  since  the  concentration  of  capital  and 
mechanical  facilities  gave  the  monopoly 
of  the  present  field  to  the  existing  journals. 


63 

Several  of  these  might  take  it ;  the  Editor,  of 
every  one  of  them  knows  he  is  making  a  bet- 
ter paper  than  his  constituency  would  like, 
and  that  he  might  add  a  half  to  his  circulation 
by  making  it  worse ;  every  one  of  them 
knows  .that  a  less  scrupulous  rival  may 
come  to  do  what  he  refuses.  It  is  with 
an  ill  grace  that  theoretical  reformers 
reproach  these  men  for  lowering  the  news- 
paper standard,  and  making  journalism  a 
curse  instead  of  a  blessing. 

But  there  are  plenty  of  things  we 
ought  to  reform.  First  among  these  I 
reckon  the  general  tendency,  even  with 
our  soberest  and  rnaturest  journals,  to 
the  faults  of  youth.  In  the  nature  of 
things,  this  tendency  will  be  constant,  for 
young  men  do  the  most  of  your  reporting  and 
a  good  deal  of  your  editing,  and  always  must. 
The  rank  and  file  can  no  more  be  made  up 
of  gray-beards  in  a  newspaper  than  in  an 
army  in  the  field.  Now  youth,  and  particularly 
youth  intrusted  with  power,  is  hasty,  impetuous, 
given  to  rash  ways.  It  is  sure  to  be  hot  tern- 


64 

pered  and  apt  to  be  acrid.  It  naturally  over- 
states the  case.  It  is  always  aggressive,  and 
is  in  danger  of  being  uncharitable.  In  the 
pride  of  its  superior  wisdom  it  is  often  over- 
critical  ;  and  it  often  mistakes  a  sneer 
for  an  argument.  It  miscalculates  its 
resources.  It  mistakes  the  work  it 
has  in  hand ;  it  sometimes  undervalues 
opponents,  and  again  it  sometimes  trains  its 
heaviest  artillery  on  mosquitoes.  Just  such 
are  the  faults  which  a  candid  observer  must 
find  more  or  less  developed  in  a  majority  of 
our  newspapers.  The  wise  Editor  will  reckon, 
upon  them  as  constant  forces,  with  which  he 
must  always  deal,  against  which  he  must  be 
on  perpetual  guard. 

Nor  will  he  mistake  the  public  judgment,  if 
he  assume  it  to  be  ill  pleased  with  much  of 
this  youthful  effervescence.  Our  people  like 
well  enough  to  see  a  hearty,  knock-down  blow 
given ;  but  they  hate  a  perpetual  nag- 
ging. A  daily  diet  of  snarl  and  sneer 
is  not  to  their  taste.  They  like  to 
have  their  paper  positive  and  frank; 


65 

they  like  to  feel  that  for  a  good  cause  and 
at  the  right  time  it  can  make  a  hard  fight ; 
but  they  prefer  that  its  natural  attitude  should 
be  kindly  (critical  enough  it  is  sure  to  be 
anyway),  and  that  its  prevailing  tone  should 
be  one  of  good  humor.  They  don't  want  to 
rise  from  its  perusal,  every  morning,  with 
a  bad  taste  in  their  mouths.  The  Editor 
who  commands  their  respect  and  persuades 
their  judgment  must  keep  his  temper,  must 
keep  out  of  petty  personal  controversies,  must 
be  seen  to  have  higher  motives  for  attack 
than  spite,  and  higher  motives  for  praise  than 
mutual  admiration.  In  a  word,  the  spirit  that 
habitually  controls  the  columns  must  be 
clearly  recognizable  as  one  of  justice ,  and 
good-will. 

In  that  spirit  we  might  escape  the  present 
tendency  to  run  in  ruts,  both  with  our  praise 
and  our  blame; — so  that,  no  matter  what  a 
man  does,  you  can  pretty  safely  predict  at 
once  what  a  good  many  papers  are  going  to 
say  about  it.  If  he  is  a  man  they  are  in  the 
habit  of  praising,  it  takes  little  less  than 


66 

arson  or  highway  robbery,  deinonstrably 
proved,  to  force  them  to  hint  a  fault. 
If  he  is  a  man  they  generally  blame,  he 
is  promptly  and  as  a  matter  of  course  as- 
sumed to  be  guilty,  however  wanton  or  un- 
likely the  charge,  unless  he  can  instantly 
prove  himself  innocent.  Nor  will  any  mode- 
rate array  of  proof  suffice.  He  must  make  a 
case  absolutely  impregnable,  with  the  pre- 
sumptions all  held  rigidly  against  him.  Nay, 
even  if  his  innocence  be  demonstrated  by  the 
exclusion  of  every  possibility  of  guilt,  it  will 
still  be  grudgingly  remarked  that,  while  this 
explanation  seems  plausible,  it  is  a  very  bad 
•ape  anyway,  for  such  a  man  to  be  getting 
mixed  up  in!  Through  this  unfortunate  ten- 
dency, black-mailers  and  all  manner  of  per- 
sonal enemies  find  the  press  their  most  ser- 
viceable ally.  Let  them  but  start  a  malignant 
story  against  a  prominent  man,  and  the  whole 
hostile  Press  may  be  counted  on  to  espouse 
it  for  them,  push  it,  and  carry  relentlessly 
forward  the  work  of  persecution.  Here  is  the 
open  secret  of  the  enormous  spread  in  this 


67 

country  of  calumny  and  personal  abuse. 
Only  get  the  Press  oat  of  these  ruts  of  praise 
and  blame,  and  the  naif  of  it  is  annihilated 
— strangled  before  it  is  born. 

Is  the  power  of  the  Press  declining  f  Every 
little  while  some  discontented  clergyman  or 
extinct  politician  declares  it  is.  Quite  re- 
cently they  have  given  us  very  sol- 
emn discourses  about  it.  Newspapers  are 
more  read,  they  admit,  but  less  heeded. 
With  the  air  of  discoverers  they  tell 
us  of  the  great  things  done  by  the 
journals  of  the  past  generation,  and  triumph- 
antly exclaim,  "  But  who  minds  now  w  *; 
a  newspaper  says  f  There  were  giants  in 
those  days ;  only  pigmies  walk  the  earth  to- 
day. In  the  earlier  times  tHe  great  news- 
paper stood  for  a  great  force  ;  now  it  only 
stands  for  a  great  noise.  It  has  become  self- 
ish, it  wants  to  make  money,  it  is  on  a  com- 
mercial basis  now,  it  actually  supports  itself— 
how  can  such  a  Press  wield  the  old  in- 
fluence 1 


68 

I  wish  to  speak  with  due  respect ;  but  really 
this  sort  of  talk — and  we  hear  a  good  deal  of 
it,  from  unsuccessful  quarters — seems  to  me 
the  twaddle  of  mushy  sentimentalists. 
Far  wiser  and  manlier  was  the  tone 
taken  by  Lord  Macaulay,  in  opening  his  great 
history  :— "  Those  who  compare  the  age  on 
which  their  lot  has  fallen  with  a  golden  age 
which  exists  only  in  their  imagination,  may 
talk  of  degeneracy  and  decay ;  but  no  man 
who  is  correctly  informed  as  to  the  past  will 
be  disposed  to  take  a  morose  or  desponding 
view  of  the  present." 

It  is  easy  to  marshal  the  great  names  of  the 
past,  and  idle  to  try  to  match  them  from 
among  the  living.  We  count  no  man  great, 
anyway,  till  he  is  dead.  But  "great  men  do 
not  necessarily  make  the  greatest  newspapers. 
As  well  might  you  challenge  The  London  Times, 
in  the  zenith  of  its  influence,  say  in  1855, 
to  prove  itself  the  equal  of  the  old  Publiclc  Ad- 
vertiser, of  the  century  before,  and  crush  it 
with  the  taunt,  "  Where  have  you  a  man  the 
equal  of  Junius  ?"  As  well  twit  our  news- 


69 

papers  of  the  sea-board  to-day  with,  their  in- 
feriority to  the  old  Pennsylvania  Gazette, 
because  among  them  all  is  to  be 
found  no  Benjamin  Franklin.  Most  true  it  is 
that  the  foremost  editorial  writer  of  our  time 
has  had  and  is  to  have  no  successor.  Horace 
Greeley  stood  alone,  without  a  peer  and 
without  a  rival ;— not  perhaps  the  ideal 
editor,  but,  fairly  judged,  the  ablest 
master  of  controversial  English  and  the  most 
successful  popular  educator  the  journalism  of 
the  English-speaking  world  has  yet  devel- 
oped. I  remember  how  through  half  his  ca- 
reer the  men  he  had  angered  were  always 
saying  his  power  had  declined. 

It  is  not  true  that  the  ability  of  the  Press 
is  declining.  The  papers  of  the  country  are 
better  written  now  than  they  ever  were  be- 
fore. They  are  better  edited.  Their  average 
courtesy  is  greater ;  their  average  morality  is 
purer ;  their  average  tendency  higher.  They 
better  hit  the  wants  ot  great,  miscel- 
laneous communities,  and  so  they  have 
more  readers  in  proportion  to  population. 


70 

Their  power  may  be  more  diffused ;  but  it  is 
UDmistakably  greater.  There  has  been  no  more 
remarkable  phenomenon  in  tne  history  of  the 
profession  than  the  rapid  growth  of  the  country 
press,  and  its  increase  in  ability,  in  resources, 
in  self-respect  and  in  influence.  There  are  half 
a  dozen  towns  in  the  interior  of  New- York  which 
now  have  better  newspapers,  with  larger  income 
and  more  influence,  than  those  of  the  metropolis 
itself  a  third  or  perhaps  even  a  quarter  of  a 
century  ago. 

Let  the  croakers  take  any  of  these  towns, 
or  any  considerable  town  in  the  country,  and 
compare  the  character  and  the  influence  of  its 
press  with  that  of  a  generation  ago,  or  of  the 
period  just  before  the  war.  Take  Kochester, 
or  Utica,  or  Troy.  Take  the  leading  papers 
of  the  New-York  State  Association,  and  com- 
pare their  circulation,  their  standing,  their 
actual  control  of  State  affairs,  with  what  they 
were  in  1860.  Or  take  my  own  old  home, 
of  which  I  may  speak  the  more  readily,  since 
I  think  I  know  it  well.  We  are  very  quick 
at  singling  out  the  foibles  of  its  leading 


71 

editors.  Even  the  Cincinnatians  themselves 
are  ready,  now  and  then,  in  a  spiteful  mood, 
to  long  for  the  good  old  days  of  "  Charley  " 
Hammond,  and  the  other  half -forgotten 
worthies  of  a  half -barbarous  period. 
Yet  I  undertake  to  say  that  from 
the  year  when  the  first-comers  established 
themselves  in  Colonel  Israel  Ludlow's  village 
around  the  fort  and  Indian  trading  post  oppo- 
site the  mouth  of  the  Licking,  down  to  this 
year  of  grace  1879,  there  has  never  been  a 
year  when  the  Press  of  Cincinnati  was  so 
ably  written  or  so  full  of  news,  was 
so  much  read  or  so  much  followed  as  it  is  to- 
day ;— never  a  year  when  it  had  so  much  to 
do  with  shaping  the  policy  of  Ohio,  and  of 
the  Ohio  Valley  ;— never  a  year  when  its  in- 
fluence counted  for  so  much  in  the  Nation  ; — 
never  a  year  when  so  much  power  was  concen- 
trated there  in  so  few  hands  as  rests  to-day  in 
those  of  Murat  Halstead,  Eichard  Smith  and 
John  McLean.  If  you  dispute  it,  name  the 
time,  the  papers,  the  men! 
No !  The  power  of  the  Newspaper  is 


72 

Dot  declining.  Never  before  was  it  so  great. 
Never  before  did  it  offer  sack  a  career.  But 
it  is  power  accompanied  by  the  usual  con- 
ditions,—greatest  when  most  self-respecting 
and  least  self-seeking. 

There  is  more  good,  young  blood  tending  to 
this  than  to  any  of  the  other  professions. 
There  is  more  movement  in  it  than  in  bar,  or 
pulpit,  or  whatever  other  so-called  learned 
profession  you  will;— -more  growth,  a  larger 
opportunity,  a  greater  Future.  We  are  getting 
the  best. 

These  young  men  will  leave  us  far  behind. 
They  will  achieve  a  usefulness  and  command 
a  power  to  which  we  cannot  aspire.  Very  crude 
and  narrow  will  seem  our  worthiest  work  to 
the  able  Editors  of  a  quarter  or  a  half  cen- 
tury hence ; — very  splendid  will  be  the  struc- 
ture they  erect.  We  shall  not  rear  the 
columns  or  carve  the  capitals  for  that  stately 
temple.  Let  us  at  least  aspire,  with  honest 
purpose  and  on  a  wise  plan,  to  lay  aright  its 
foundations. 


APPENDIX. 


The  foregoing  address  was  delivered  before  the 
New- York  Editorial  Association  at  Rochester  on  the 
17th  of  June,  1879.  Substantially  the  same  ad- 
dress was  delivered  before  the  Ohio  Editorial  Asso- 
ciation two  days  later  at  Cincinnati— where  it  was 
introduced  as  follows : 

First  of  all,  my  best  thanks  to  you  for  remember- 
ing—for three  years  in  succession-— my  birthright  as 
an  Ohio  editor.  It  is  something  I  could  never  for- 
get, but  you  might  have  done  so  very  easily.  We 
fancy,  those  of  us  who  were  contemporaries  then, 
that  we  are  yet  tolerably  young,  but  in  our  secret 
hearts  it  does  flatter  every  one  of  us  now  to  be  still 
spoken  of  sometimes  as  "  the  Young  Editor."  It  is 
twenty-one  years  this  Autumn  since,  with  boyish 
pride,  I  first  saw  my  name  printed  at  the  head  of 
the  editorial  columns  in  my  old  papier  at  Xenia,  and 
holding  up  the  sheet  again  and  agaip,  puzzled  over 
the  important  question  whether  or  not  it  would  look 
better  in  some  other  type.  How  little  any  of  us  re- 
alized that  the  types  we  were  using  then  would  have 
something  to  do  with  the  way  our  names  should 
look  now ! 

Well,  those  that  are  left  of  us,  of  the  country 
editors  of  Ohio  of  that  day,  have  at  least  served  our 
apprenticeship ;  for  good  or  ill,  somehow  or  another, 
we  have  attained  our  majority. 


74 

I  remember  a  smallish,  solid,  prosperous  looking 
exchange  of  those  days,  which  edited  the  county 
printing  with  pious  care,  as  well  it  might,  for, 
though  The  Bucyrus  Journal  Editor  was  then 
known  only  as  plain  D.  R.  Locke,  ex- "jour"  printer, 
and ;  a  red-hot  Republican,  he  was  soon  to  hurst 
upon  us  as  the  Rev.  Petroleum  V.  Nasby.  Then,  as 
now,  The  Ashtdbula  Sentinel  was  in  the  hands  of  a 
Howells,  but  the  young  son  of  the  Editor  had  gone 
down  to  Columbus,  and  was  trying  to  see  whether 
there  was  enough  practical  stuff  in  him  to  make  a 
leader-writer  for  The  State  Journal,  at  a  salary  of  $12 
a  week.  Quite  fair  work  he  did,  but  he  was  dread- 
fully given  to  very  misty  German  novels,  and  to 
reading  his  long  translations  at  extremely  unrea- 
sonable hours  to  sleepy-headed  friends  whom  he 
might  inveigle  to  his  rooms.  His  name  was  Wm. 
D.  Howells,  and  he  now  edits  The  Atlantic  Monthly. 
His  chief  there  had  no  alarming  weakness  then  in 
the  way  of  German  sentimentalism ;  but  he  was 
ready  to  wander  away  from  his  unfinished  editorial 
at  any  hour,  day  or  night,  for  the  chance  of  finding 
a  German  band  in  a  concert-saloon,  and  that  ten- 
dency at  least  has  survived  the  changes,  the  added 
powers  and  the  wider  influence  The  Press  and 
The  Gazette  and  twenty  years  have  wrought  upon 
Mr.  Sam  R.  Reed.  In  those  days  The  State  Journal 
was  thought  to  be  rather  putting  on  airs,  for  it  not 
only  had  two  editors  (Reed  and  Howells),  but  it  in- 
dulged the  luxury  of  a  publisher,  who  "  ran  "  two 
papers,  both  daily,  and  he  published  them  so  well 
that  presently  he  became  head  of  the  Washington 
branch  of  the  great  house  that  placed  the  war  loans, 
and  "Governor77  Henry  D.  Cooke,  of  the  District 
of  Columbia. 


75 

There  was  a  lively  '* local"  then  on  The  Cleveland 
Plain  Dealer.  He  had  been  a  "  tramping  jour,"  and 
scattered  over  Ohio  from  the  river  to  the  lakes 
were  sundry  boarding-houses  in  towns  where 
struggling  papers  had  given  up  the  ghost,  whence 
this  "jour"  had  moved  on,  unpaid  himself,  and 
with  an  ever-swelling  array  of  unpaid  board  bills 
behind  him.  At  last,  in  printer  phrase,  he  "struck 
it  fat,"  and  back  he  came  on  his  old  trail  among 
us  through  Southern  Ohio,  where  every  bill  that 
Charley  Browne  had  left  was  paid  by  Artemus 
Ward.  Poor,  genial,  reckless  Browne !  I  am  glad  I 
never  saw  him  after  he  left  Ohio,  for  the  career  by 
which  he  is  to  be  remembered  was  then  over,  and 
the  rest  was  painful. 

In  those  days  Richard  Smith  had  only  lately 
ceased  to  be  Associated  Press  agent,  and  he  still 
clung  to  the  commercial  and  financial  columns  of 
The  Gazette.  He  was  the  shrewdest,  as  well  as  the 
most  indulgent  of  managers ;  but  neither  I  nor  any 
of  his  other  wicked  partners  had  then  fully  awaked 
to  his  extraordinary  true-goodness.  On  the  next 
block  The  Commercial  was  making  interminable  talk 
about  its  wonderful  four-cylinder  press.  Potter  was 
still  active,  but  a  young  fellow  named  Halstead, 
who  had  for  some  time  been  "the  scissors"  of  the 
establishment,  was  coming  to  the  front.  He  had 
already  learned  one  secret  of  making  a  good  news- 
paper, for  he  was  inventing  special  trains 'from 
Columbus  or  special  dispatches  from  Xenia  to  en- 
able him  to  get  into  The  Commercial  in  time  for  the 
midnight  editions,  one  day  ahead  of  The  Gazette, 
whole  columns  of  clippings  from  the  latest  New- 
York  papers.  "Pap "Taylor  had  already  secured 
for  that  grotesque  production  of  those  days,  The 


76 

Dollar  Weekly  Times,  a  circulation  of  over  a  hundred 
thousand  copies,  and  Starbuck  was  wisely  adminis- 
tering the  trust.  Quaint,  kindly  old  fellow!  He 
didn't  witch  the  world  with  noble  editing  ;  but  I 
never  think  of  him  without  gratitude,  for  he  en- 
gaged me  to  write  him  one  Columbus  letter  a  column 
long,  every  day,  for  $5  a  week,  when  I  was  more 
than  glad  to  get  the  job. 

Bickham  shone  then  as  the  red  'ribbon  reporter  of 
all  the  agricultural  fairs.  He  was  yet  to  serve  an 
army  apprenticeship  before  rising  to  the  dignity 
and  dollars  of  our  Dayton  Warwick.  Nichols  had 
rivals  then  in  Springfield ;  he  had  not  yet  starved 
them  all  out.  Plumb  had  just  left  my  own  old  of- 
fice in  Xenia  to  start  on  the  Kansas  road,  that  has 
led  him  to  the  United  States  Senate. 

But  a  truce  to  these  reminiscences— a  sure  sign 
that  we  are  growing  old.  Let  me  only  say  how  glad 
and  proud  I  am  to  find  a  place  kept  for  me  among 
this  younger  generation  of  Ohio  country  editors. 
Young  or  old,  we  agree  in  this  :  we  are  all  proud  we 
are  Ohioans,  whether  we  live  here  or  not— proud 
that  we  were  born  here,  proud  of  Ohio's  soldiers, 
proud  of  Ohio's  statesmen,  proud  that  she  has  held 
the  White  House  for  twelve  years,  and  to  believe 
that,  with  one  party  or  another,  she  is  to  hold  it 
for  at  least  four  more ;  proud  of  her  wealth  in  great 
names  and  great  resources :  proudest  of  all  of  the 
high-spirited,  generous  people,  the  nameless  masses, 
who  make  tbe  noble  State,  the  Gracious  Mother  of 
us  all 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


APR     2   1948 

JUN  16  1948 

19Nov'52fl) 


REC'D  LD 

NOV20'63"8PM 
IN  STACKS 

MAY  2  6  1978 


flffinili  MR  2472-441  54 


YB  14143 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY  J^^M? 


